Calibrating the PhD for Industry 4.0: global concerns, national agendas and Australian institutional responses

ABSTRACT

The demands of Industry 4.0 (the Fourth Industrial Revolution) for a future-ready skilled workforce have placed significant political pressure on PhD programs to deliver different sorts of graduates. The paper documents the prevalent ‘skills gap’ narrative of global policy actors and, and using a multi-scalar policy lens, examines global and national research-training policy debates and Australian institutional responses to calls to transform the PhD to make it more amenable to the new economic conditions. We provide a survey and analysis of recent institutional changes to the PhD in Australia and find that these fall into three overlapping categories: increased employability skills training; the development of industry- and end-user engaged programs; and flexible pathways to the PhD. Following this analysis, we step back to ask some critical questions of these developments both in terms of how effectively they answer the challenges put out in Industry 4.0 discourses and the problematic assumptions, silences and omissions in the policy debates and university responses. Drawing on a capability approach to human development we argue that PhD graduates should not only be prepared to meet the demands of Industry 4.0 but also to lead us through the socio-economic transformations this revolution may entail.

KEYWORDS:

• Australia
• industry 4.0
• Fourth Industrial Revolution
• skills gap
• PhD reform
• industry engagement
• graduate capability

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Dr Kay Dreyfus for her editorial assistance in preparing this article for publication. We would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Tebeje Molla http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6848-3091

Denise Cuthbert http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2959-4546

Notes

1 Examples of commentaries on the value of the PhD published on academic news and views sites can be found at https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-PhDs-Romanticize-the/245423 (USA); https://www.universityaffairs.ca/career-advice/beyond-the-professoriate/response-u-ts-10000-phds-project/ (Canada); https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20170410230128288 (Sweden); https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/exactly-how-valuable-phd (UK); https://theconversation.com/its-time-to-reduce-the-number-of-phd-students-or-rethink-how-doctoral-programs-work-68972 (Australia); and https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/technology-and-learning/what-should-be-terminal-degree-our-new-field-learning (USA).

2 See https://www.education.gov.au/sharper-incentives-university-industry-engagement-through-streamlining-university-research-block

3 See https://www.deakin.edu.au/research/become-a-research-student/phd-xtra

4 See PhD Up program. Retrieved 11 March 2019, from https://www.rmit.edu.au/students/student-essentials/information-for/research-candidates/enriching-your-candidature/phd-up-program

5 See details of the Framework at https://cdf.graduate-school.uq.edu.au. Part of the description reads: ‘Developed in consultation with industry, the Career Development Framework provides you with a holistic approach to research training covering topics such as research integrity, networking, communication skills and inter-cultural communication, writing skills, teamwork, CV writing, entrepreneurship, business acumen, resilience and emotional intelligence'.

6 Details of the UTS-Industry Doctorate Program can be found at https://www.uts.edu.au/research-and-teaching/our-research/industry-partnerships/ways-engage/uts-industry-doctorate-program

7 See full program description of Monash GRIPS at https://www.monash.edu/graduate-research/future-students/phd/interdisciplinary for further details on industry partnerships associated with the PhD

8 Details can be found at https://www.iprep.edu.au

9 See the website of the program at https://www.csiro.au/en/Careers/Student-and-graduate-opportunities/Industry-PhD

10 See details at https://inspiringnsw.org.au/2017/12/04/introducing-iphd/